Found some more beaver sign today with a friend. Beaver has a tree cut down maybe 20 yards away from his lodge and the other one we saw while we were looking for other sign. Hopefully, they're still around during Thanksgiving break so I can focus on them a little more. At the first lodge, we saw coyote, raccoon, mink, and obviously, beaver tracks everywhere. This is awesome because these are the 2nd and 3rd colonies of beavers I have found this year and I would like to catch one. Hopefully, I can trap a few and expand to a little bit more gear for beavers. These were not the only slides, one of the lodges had 5 slides and I saw 4 more on the other lodge so plenty of spots to put traps.







Here's the second lodge

Man, all those fresh slicked up mud trails. Active beaver locations they practically put up neon flashing signs pointing to where you should place traps.
Have fun bud!
Jim

Looks like you have a lot of nice places to set! Go get em!

I'm so excited, never trapped a beaver before so this is all new to me. Have 3 #3 or #4 DLS and 2 330 conibears to start with and a few slide cables.

Good spot there. Have at em'

Good traps and good sign so your already ahead of the game. Just make good sets and eat a good breakfast the next morning cause you'll get a good workout hauling beavers the next day!

Well, the time has come upon us, only about 12 hours until I'm hitting the road to go set some steel in the water. I'm missing school tomorrow to do something that I love and couldn't be any happier. The truck is loaded with all of my gear; all that's left are my waders, gauntlets, and myself.

Looks like fun day for sure.

Enjoy the day! I'm a teacher, but I will even cut you some slack for missing tomorrow! We also missed school on opening trapping day years ago.

Go get'm!! There are alot of things you learn trapping that school can't. Good luck!

I will! By the same time last year I would have missed at least a week and a half of school but this year I have missed 0 days so this is a little treat to myself. Been working hard the last 2 weeks on yard cleanups also so going out and doing what I love will help me more than anything else.

Funny story though, I was walking back from the bathroom during lunch and the principal/super intendant stopped me (they watch over lunch). She said what great of a job I had been doing keeping my grades up (Not hard for me and should be a given) and how I haven't missed any school. I told her that I was missing tomorrow and she asked why so I said "I'm going trapping". The look on her face was priceless, luckily all of my teachers know what I do during this time of year and have been nice to me about missing tomorrow. My art teacher is the most supportive because one day while I wasn't feeling like doing my work, I talked with her about trapping, and over the next few weeks I have been telling her the days until the season. Today I told her I wasn't going to be there tomorrow and she was so excited that It was finally time for me to go set traps. Anyways that's my story of the day but I need to keep working on getting caught up on homework.

Thank you! The plan is to get the 8 dozen traps I have set aside set tomorrow and the first check is on Thursday.

Excellent, following along.

My senior year of high school and I wanted to take the first week of trapping off from school. Talked to the principal the Monday before and he said to let him think about it and stop back Friday after school. Meanwhile I got all my homework done and things cleared with my teachers. Friday finally came and when I went into talk to my principal, he said no as if he let me go then he would have to let everyone go. Poor excuse as half the school was gone when it came to harvesting or deer hunting but I had a plan. Monday morning when I got to school I reaked of skunk! My teacher sent me to the principal's office and he sent me home. My plan worked and I spent the rest of the week trapping. Friday the school called and told my parents I hadn't been to school all week and wondered why. That evening I got home and was confronted by my my parents. I just came from my fur buyer and pulled out a fat check that was more than both my parents made in a month combined! Nothing more was said at home or school. Now, like I said go get'm!!

I don't know if my measly fur check nowadays would have the same effect and I'm not too willing to try.

A great story! Wish I could have trapped when fur brought real prices

Well, 32 sets in today in 7 hours, very poor numbers on my part. I would walk up to a hut just fine and there would be 6" of water around the whole hut, not near enough water to drown them in. Little bits of vegetation in 6 ft circles around the feed beds took 10-15 minutes to clear just to set a couple of traps. At least I put in 32 good sets and not 96 hail mary sets.

Ended up getting permission to hunt coyotes on some guy's land though after he had a coyote come out of the trees after the ball that he was throwing for his dog. Which turned into me getting trapping permission for all of his ground. Found a beaver colony in one of his stock dam/sloughs which will be the 4th colony so far found. They have caused lots of destruction already and have at least 5 of the 8 or 9 trees that are surrounding the slough/stock dam starting to get dropped. They're at least 2 of them there but most likely more.

Also was cruising down a road that has a lake on both sides and I saw something sticking out of a pile of reeds so I stopped and checked it out and pulled out a spinning rod and reel combo that still works. And not 5 feet away, there was a mimic minnow. So that helped me cheer up a bit after having a harder day of trapping.

I would have liked to get 96 sets out but not everything always works out and it wasn't from a lack of effort. I enjoyed being out on the sloughs and I learned way more than if I had been in a classroom for the same amount of time. Lots of pheasants out and I almost had a hen land on top of me, it would have too unless I had yelled "Hey"!

Bottom edge set I put in



One of the three colony traps I put in, wasn't much of anywhere to put a foothold leading up to the feedbed but there was a slight run.



Here's the picture of me just arriving at the slough, boat did very well and was handy for setting the traps on.



Videos posting after this

Here's a spot where there were two runs going into trails from the slough that the rats were using to get to their bank dens and the mink were following. Both are set with 110 conibears on wooden stakes.



Here's one of my favorite sets of the day, halfway submerged 110 conibear on a wood stake in a heavily used run/trail.

Here's one of the toilet/feedbed sets that I did, had to scrape out vegetation for 10 minutes with the potato rake just to get the water open enough to drown the rat.